Making and decorating Athenian black- and red-figure vases

The first stage in making a pot is to dig the clay out of the
ground. Pieces of grit or plant matter must be removed before the
clay can be used. This was done in ancient times, as it is today,
by mixing the clay with water and letting the heavier impurities
sink to the bottom. This process could be carried out as many times
as necessary. When judged to be sufficiently fine, the clay was
left to dry out to the required consistency.

To make a vase the potter kneaded a lump of clay of suitable
size and placed it centrally on the flat surface of the wheel. As
the wheel revolved, the potter drew the clay up into the required
shape with his hands. Scenes on the vases themselves show that
potters' wheels were discs, presumably made of wood, clay or stone,
about two feet in diameter, with socketed bases fitting over low,
fixed pivots. It seems to have been usual to have a boy, presumably
an apprentice potter, to turn the wheel by hand. Particularly large
vases were thrown in sections, and in the case of shapes such as
cups, the foot would be thrown separately from the body. The
handles of most shapes were hand-made. When all the components had
been allowed to dry for about twelve hours, they were glued
together with clay slip.

A preliminary sketch was generally made on a figured vase,
probably with a stick of charcoal. Occasionally traces of this
process can be seen in the form of faint indentations in the
surface of the vase. The painting was done with specially prepared
clay slips. Black slip, used for the silhouette-like figures on
black-figure vases and for the background on red-figure pots, was a
finely purified form of the same clay used for the body of the
vase. On a black-figured vase many of the inner details of the
figures were incised through the slip with a sharp tool. On a
red-figured vase, the inner details were painted with thinner or
thicker solutions of the normal black slip. In both techniques,
other details could be added in purplish-red or white: the red was
the normal black slip with the addition of red iron oxide pigment,
while the white was a pure, kaolin-rich clay. All these slips were
applied with brushes of varying thicknesses.